In Calabria Page 9

  To the cats he marveled, “I have never been so popular as now, in the hour of my doom. I must remember this. What a rare thing.”

  On days when Romano delivered the mail, he spoke far less than usual, and seemed to regard Bianchi with a curious new mixture of admiration, puzzlement, and deep misgiving, the latter most often expressed in the corner of his eye. When Bianchi challenged him directly to say what was on his mind, Romano would only shrug, flap his arms vaguely, and go off shaking his head. Bianchi would stare after him, half-amused, half as bewildered as he.

  Finally, one afternoon when an exasperated Bianchi had followed him to the mail van, pressing him sharply for an answer, Romano turned on him, red and white with anger by turns. “You are going to make my sister a widow before she is ever married. If you want to stretch your neck out on the block and wait for the ’Ndrangheta to chop your head off . . . well, that is your own stupid business—but at least have the decency to tell her not to love you so much. Order her not to love you, Bianchi—do that much, if you do nothing more.” There were no tears in his eyes, but he was trembling, and his nose was running. “No, don’t do that, of course not, she would never take orders from God and Santo Michele together. But if you love her, then stop sitting here with no gun, no friends, no police, writing your poems and feeding your pigs. Protect your woman, Bianchi, if you won’t protect yourself.”

  He scrambled clumsily and angrily into the van, and was away without a wave or a backward glance.

  “I think he wishes that he had never taught you to drive,” he said to Giovanna when the Vespa dropped her off that evening. “So much might have been avoided.”

  “Oh, I would have learned,” she replied lightly. “And I already knew where you lived.” She chuckled against him, rubbing her head against his arm like a cat. “Silvana was going to teach me, and I was always watching my brothers.” She frowned then, thoughtfully enough that the dark brows became a straight bar. “Something is wrong with Silvana, I think. Perhaps a man, perhaps family—they are a little strange, her people. Silvana is the only one of them I could ever . . .” She shrugged abruptly and dropped the subject. “She doesn’t talk to me as much, and today she kept looking at me . . . oddly. I am probably imagining it.”

  “She may be frightened for you,” Bianchi said quietly. “As your brother is—as I am. She may know something, and be afraid to speak. This is Calabria, after all.”

  “She would not dare!” The eyebrows now seemed to melt into each other. “If she heard or saw something that might be dangerous to you, or even picked up the rumor of a rumor that someone had said something to someone else, and she did not tell me, she would be better off in the hands of the ’Ndrangheta.” She glared at him with comical ferocity. “So would you be, if you knew something and tried to spare me or shield me. I have a right to say that, Bianchi.”

  “I will shield you from nothing,” he promised her. “Rather, I will hide behind you.” She continued to glare, suspecting that he was mocking her; then saw that he was not, and let her small face ease into soft laughter. Her laugh always sounded to Bianchi like green leaves rustling against each other.

  On a Tuesday evening, while she was putting away the dinner dishes—never having cooked for anyone in his life, it was more exciting than he could ever explain to be preparing as simple a dish as baccalà al pomodoro for them to eat together—she said over her shoulder, “But they could have gone away, you know. How long has it been since you have seen them? Can you really be so certain?”

  “It is not important what I believe,” Bianchi replied. “What the ’Ndrangheta believe—that is what matters.”

  Giovanna turned from the dishes, and he shrugged. “I think perhaps whether the unicorns are still here or not does not matter so much to them anymore. La vendetta, now . . .”

  Giovanna set down the dish towel, so gently and deliberately that the effect was more fierce than if she had hurled it across the kitchen. In a similarly quiet voice, she remarked, “I think you should know that when they shoot you down on your own doorstep, I will not wear mourning. I may not even go to your funeral.”

  “Va bene,” Bianchi agreed amiably. “The Tenente has already assured me that he would come, and I am sure Malatesta would not miss it for a fortune. I may even get that thief Falcone, and if old Frascati’s arthritis is not bothering him too greatly—”

  She was across the kitchen and at him before he could put up his hands to defend himself, beating at him with the same fury with which she had routed the ’Ndrangheta thugs. “You joke!” she gasped. “I can stand anything but this stupid, stupid joking!” A sudden explosion of helpless, furious tears rendered her almost speechless. “Bianchi, they really will kill you, they will burn this house over your head—”

  Bianchi caught her flailing hands and held them to his cheek. “But not tonight,” he said. He put his arms around her. “Not tonight. Come.”

  He led her outside, and they sat in the twilight, snuggled into the old wicker chair, each with a glass of white Ciro, and Bianchi’s worn brown jacket around Giovanna’s shoulders. After a time, she said softly, “See, now, this moment, we are just like ordinary people, people who are not afraid, not looking for unicorns, but only keeping each other warm on a spring evening. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  Bianchi was silent for a little while before he answered her. “Do not make any mistake about me. This is very important—I do not ever want you to imagine that I am a fearless warrior, indifferent to death, because I am nothing of the kind. And yet—” he hesitated, plainly reaching for words that he had never spoken to her before. “She touched me, you know, Giobella—La Signora. With her horn . . . here. I told you that?” Giovanna nodded, her mouth set for whatever she might hear, but her green eyes wide and waiting. “I did. Yes. Well, it hurt me at the time—it hurt terribly, like a brand, the way we do with cattle, horses, so that everyone will know they are ours.”

  He brought her hand to his left shoulder, and she pulled back, feeling the heat through the worn fabric. “Yes, just so,” he said again. “Ever since then . . . ever since then, I do not seem to care about being afraid. Somewhere in the background of my living, someone is very much afraid, but it does not appear to be me. Does that make any sense to you, my Giobella—my own girl?” He took hold of both her hands again, leaning close to stare into her eyes. “Because it makes no sense at all to me, and it does frighten me. It does.”

  “No,” she said. “No, of course it makes no sense—how can you even ask me that?” Then she smiled, pressing her hands more firmly into his. “But nothing has made sense since the first time I drove Romano’s mail van up here and saw you with a pregnant unicorn. Since I fell in love like an idiot, forever in love with a man twice my age, who writes poetry and makes silly jokes, and has a goat named out of an opera.” The green eyes darkened, but they held his own eyes without tears. “Who will not lift a finger to save himself from the ’Ndrangheta, because the unicorn told him it would be all right. Bianchi, I meant what I said—I am not coming to your funeral.”

  “Va bene, tesora,” Bianchi said again. “Then I certainly will not come, either.”

  They went to bed early. This time Bianchi woke, not to the sound of a door being smashed in, nor of heavy boots attempting to treat his ribs in the same way, but to the sensation of cold metal being nudged—oddly gently, considering—just under his nose. He opened his eyes slowly and saw the guns.

  Beside him, Giovanna uttered a small squeak, but made no other sound. In the predawn light, he saw that there were many more men than there had been the previous time; enough that some had to crowd into the bedroom doorway and the kitchen beyond. They were large men, for the most part, looking generally like young businessmen whose ventures were not doing well. All of them were holding pistols, and two held kerosene cans—it was that smell that had begun to awaken him, even before the gun barrel in his face.

  The only one unarmed was the monster, who stood close to the bed, smiling do
wn at Bianchi. As immaculately dressed as ever, a Toscano between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, he said, “Signor Bianchi. So sorry to disturb your well-earned slumber.”

  Bianchi sat up, putting his arm around Giovanna’s trembling shoulders. Feeling her fear angered him—my Giobella is not to be afraid of this pig—and he demanded, “What do you want?”

  The monster sighed, as though their dispute had already gone on too long. “What I wanted before, as I informed you then. What I have always wanted—a quiet little farm, with one or two unicorns on it, to spend my declining years in peace. Would you say that this was too much to ask, Signor Bianchi?”

  “There are no unicorns here,” Bianchi said. “There were, yes, I admit that, but they are gone. Search as you like.” He yawned, and made as though to settle comfortably back in the bed.

  The monster smiled benignly again, patting Bianchi’s cheek. “Oh, that will not be necessary.” He pointed to the window: a very small movement, no more than a flick of two fingers. “Come and see for yourself, if you will.”

  La Signora and her black colt might have been posing against the dawn, so clearly they stood out in Bianchi’s vineyard, where he had seen her first. Raising her head, she looked toward the house, and he had no doubt that she saw, not only the black sedans parked directly before it, but everyone within, and what was being done there. And he knew equally well, and without any illusion of rescue, that it was all no concern of hers. She was a unicorn.

  “You cannot capture them,” he said. “You can only kill them.”

  The monster sighed again. “Do you know, once that would have been enough. The horn, the hide . . . the skull itself, either to mount on my wall or to sell for a price never imagined—what else could I have desired? But now that I have seen them, at this distance . . .”

  Giovanna spoke for the first time. “You will never lay your smallest finger on them. They would never let anyone like you come near. Or your teppisti, either.” She jerked her head contemptuously toward the large, silent men who filled the room.

  Bianchi gripped her shoulder hard, but the monster only nodded in mournful accord. “Entirely correct, signorina. We by ourselves could never approach such splendid creatures, not for a moment. But he can.” The finger-flick toward Bianchi was all but unnoticeable.

  “Perhaps I could.” Bianchi’s voice was level and calm. “But you already know that I never will.”

  The monster was nodding before Bianchi had finished speaking, simultaneously lighting another Toscano from the first, and grinding the original underfoot on the bedroom floor. “Bene, let us consider the two options before us. The possibility most to be wished is that you will cooperate fully with my associates and myself in capturing two genuine unicorns—one, really, for each will follow wherever the other is taken. You will be properly compensated for your assistance, and no harm will come to you and the Signorina Muscari—on that, you have my word.” He paused, and while his voice did not change, the depthless brown eyes did. “Then there is the far less pleasant option, which I truly do not like even to consider.” The two men with kerosene cans tilted them slightly, and liquid began slowly to splash onto the floor.

  Giovanna gave a soft cry of horror; and though she bit back any other sound, Bianchi could see the color leave her face, even in the dimness of the bedroom. The monster gestured sharply, and the men brought the gas cans upright again. “I would not enjoy this. It would make a point, but otherwise it would do neither of us any good. But I will burn this hovel to the ground, with your good selves inside, if I have to, because making my point is just as important to me as any fottuto unicorns. Do you understand me?”

  The obscenity, in the quiet, cultivated voice, was as shocking as the threat itself. Bianchi said, “Yes,” but hardly heard the reply himself. Beside him, without raising her own voice, Giovanna was giving vent to a rich round of Sicilian and Neapolitan curses that followed upon each other as steadily as the beads of a rosary. Bianchi had had no idea that she knew even half of those phrases, and kept her fluency firmly in mind from then on. The monster finally raised a hand, saying, “Impressive, but not an answer. Signor Bianchi?”

  “I will go out to the unicorns,” Bianchi said. “If I can calm them while your people slink up on them, I will do so. But I will not help you capture them. That you cannot make me do.”

  “No, I would not have imagined so,” the monster replied graciously. “Good. You will go as close as you can to the unicorns, and my men and I will follow at a respectful distance.” He smiled widely at Giovanna with something that might even have been real amusement. “The well-spoken and valiant Signorina Muscari will remain here with my friend Paolo.” He indicated a man with a bald bullet head and a recently-broken nose—did I do that? “Who is quite aware that he will lose any hand—any finger—that he lays on her. I keep my word.”

  Bianchi got out of bed and groped for his clothes—grateful, in the single glance that passed between him and Giovanna, that she had indeed bought him a pair of well-cut blue pajamas, which he wore even when she was not with him, for the smell of her. The monster courteously turned his back while Bianchi dressed, nodding him toward the door. “All that is required of you is to keep the unicorns’ attention as long as you can, and we will do the rest.” Bianchi focused more selectively on the guns then, realizing that several of them were oddly and ominously shaped. He shook his head, trying to look more serenely amused than he felt.

  “Your tranquilizers will be useless,” he said. “It will not matter what I do. Giovanna has already told you this. I am telling you the same thing now, so that you will not blame us afterward.”

  The monster had turned back to the window, and his voice had abruptly become as cold and pitiless as the tramontane. “Quickly, Signor Bianchi. If they decide to disappear again while you are putting on your shoes, I will be greatly displeased.”

  Bianchi struggled into his old leather coat that no longer seemed to welcome him, as always, but almost to fight with his fear-stiffened arms and shoulders. He looked once more at Giovanna, then to Paolo, who grinned at him with stubby gray teeth. Then he walked out of the house, and the ’Ndrangheta followed, but he did not look back.

  The sun had not yet risen, and the chill air made him wish that he had first emptied his bladder, but I didn’t want them to think that I was pissing myself for fear of them. His animals, even Cherubino, were nowhere to be seen, God, did they pour kerosene in the barn, too? La Signora and her colt were still in his vineyard, not grazing, watching him. He walked toward them, thinking dangerdangerdanger as loudly as he could, trying to broadcast fear and warning with nothing but his eyes. The ’Ndrangheta stayed well back, as the monster had ordered them to do, but Bianchi heard their footsteps, the soft insect clicking of the tranquilizer guns being loaded and cocked, and the nervous rustling of ropes in the hands of those who held them. Standing well to the side, the girl Silvana, head low, hands twisting together, shamed eyes looking away as he passed. The ’Ndrangheta are family, always, nothing can be trusted but the blood. I should have thought about Silvana.

  La Signora, watching his approach, studying the men following him, nudged the black colt behind her; otherwise she showed no alarm and made no sound. The monster was moving up ahead of his men, disobeying his own commands. Bianchi never turned his head, but knew whose hunger chilled the back of his neck. The unicorns waited, unmoving.

  Coming within reach of La Signora, he bowed his head, on an impulse, as he would have been less likely to do before a queen. The unicorn put her head against his, her breath whuffling lightly in his hair. She smells like autumn, the first morning. He could hear the whisper of the ropes being shaken out into nooses, and for a single moment he tangled his fingers deep in her mane.

  Then he was on her back.

  For all that his head slightly topped her shoulder, it felt as though he were clawing his way up the face of a glacier. A cold mist closed on him from the first moment, and sound thinned to indistingu
ishable chitterings, and to a few somewhat louder noises which might have been either shouts or gunshots. La Signora surged under him as he straddled her: not as a single creature, not even as a unicorn, but as something that did not know him, a white vastness that wished him neither evil nor any recognizable good, but only its own immortal freedom and power. He clung with all his strength to the dark-gold mane he could not see, knowing beyond thought that if he fell he would be trampled and gored to dust for his equally vast audacity before ever the ’Ndrangheta laid hands on him. He tried to see Giovanna’s face behind his tight-shut eyelids, but the sole image that came to him was the somber devil-face of the old goat Cherubino; and in that never-to-beconfessed moment, he yearned for the slit-pupiled yellow eyes just as deeply and hungrily as for the loving, amused green ones.

  Well, you will never see her again, Bianchi, so she will never know.

  The unicorn did not rear or buck like a horse, nor whirl in neck-snapping circles to throw him off; rather, she had become the spinning center of a spinning, melting universe, so that he could neither feel the jar of her hooves on the ground, nor be certain where any ground might truly be. Dazed and disoriented, he flattened himself along her neck; and somewhere as far away as Giovanna’s eyes, she screamed, and her son echoed her call. And Bianchi heard a third cry—a thin night-bird wail of hopeless terror and loss—and knew it for his own, and despaired. And still he hung on, insane and unyielding, with the unicorn’s mane whipping his eyes blind.

  Which was perhaps the only way that he could ever have seen La Signora’s mate coming to her.